Daily Archives: Friday, May 6, 2016

  • Open source helps Bristol academics win award

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Open Source, Tech

    photo of Marcella Oliviero and Andrea Zhok from Bristol Uni Department of ItalianOpen source software was an essential element in the work of 2 Bristol modern languages tutors who have just won an award.

    The University of Bristol has announced that Marcella Oliviero and Andrea Zhok have won first prize in the 2016 Apereo Teaching & Learning Awards (ATLAS) for a project that helped first-year students in the Department of Italian teach elements of grammar to their peers. With support from University staff, students were encouraged to develop their own tutorials using Xerte, an open source software package for the creation of interactive teaching and learning materials, which has been developed by the University of Nottingham. As a result, students gained a greater stake in their own learning, improved their subject knowledge and acquired new IT skills.

    Xerte bannerApereo is a network that develops and maintains e-learning software used in thousands of educational institutions worldwide. Packages like Xerte permit the use of a wide range of functions and media to make the learning experience richer and more diverse than is possible with traditional methods. The tutors’ success was announced at the 2016 Xerte Conference in Nottingham and they have also been invited to present their work at the Open Apereo conference in New York later this month.

    Initially posted on Bristol Wireless.

  • LibreOffice 5.0.6 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday The Document Foundation announced the availability LibreOffice 5.0.6 “still”, the sixth release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family, which can be used for the deployment in large organisations and for more conservative software users.

    The Document Foundation recommends large-scale deployment of LibreOffice 5.0.6 with professional level 3 support from certified developers (a list of qualified developers is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). When migrating to LibreOffice from proprietary office suites such as MS Office, organisations are further advised to seek professional support from certified migration consultants and trainers, which are listed on the same web page.

    In addition, there are companies providing LibreOffice LTS (Long Term Support) versions with incremental updates which are targeted at enterprise deployments.

    People interested in technical details about the release can see the bugs fixed in RC1) and those fixed in RC2.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.0.6 is available for immediate download.

    LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation by making a donation. In addition, LibreOffice merchandise is now available from the brand new project shop.

    LibreOffice Conference

    The 2016 LibreOffice Conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Information Technology at Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic from 7th to 9th September. The conference is being organised by OpenAlt.

    Details of the Call for Papers, which is open until 15th July 2016, are available at https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/04/08/libreoffice-brno-conference-call-for-paper/, whilst registration has also opened for the conference.

    LibreOffice development versions

    screenshot of LibreOffice 5.2 alpha1
    LibreOffice 5.2 alpha1 – a development version currently available

    Pre-release development versions of LibreOffice are also available. To access these, visit the pre-releases server.

    Finally, for those who want to right on the bleeding edge of software development, there are nightly builds available, although it should be pointed out that both pre-release and nightly build versions are intended for technology enthusiasts and developers only; use in a production environment by users with average IT skills is not recommended.